Yet, Windows comes with about 30 other Windows Key shortcuts, where you hold down the Windows Key and press a single letter or character to complete a task. Learning a few will really speed up your work, especially on laptops with their awkward trackpads.

I use these Windows key shortcuts most often:

Press +E to fetch the handy Computer program, which grants quick access to your drives, libraries, and favorite folders.

To align two windows side-by-side on your Desktop, press and the left arrow within one window; then press and the right arrow within the other window. The windows quickly align themselves side-by-side on your desktop, making for easy cutting and pasting between them.

Launch taskbar programs. The first program listed on my taskbar is Outlook, so pressing +1 launches that program. If it’s already running, +1 brings it to the top of my desktop’s pile o’ windows. Similarly, pressing + 2 fetches the taskbar’s second program, +3 calls up the third, and so on.

When on my laptop, + X brings up the Mobility Center, a subset of the Control Panel that deals exclusively with laptop features like checking the battery, and turning wireless Internet access on or off.

Here’s the full list of Windows Key shortcuts for Windows 7; many work in Windows Vista and Windows XP, as well:

	Open or close the Start menu.
+Pause	Display the System Properties window.
+D	Display the desktop.
+M	Minimize all open windows.
+Shift+M	Restore those minimized windows to the desktop.
+E	Open Computer.
+F	Search for a file or folder.
Ctrl++F	Search for computers (if you’re on a network).
+L	Lock your computer or switch users, handy when leaving the keyboard for a break.
+R	Open the Run dialog box.
+T	Cycle through programs on the taskbar.
+number	Start the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. (If the program is already running, switch to that program.)
Shift++number	Start a new instance of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
Ctrl++number	Switch to the last active window of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
Alt++number	Open the Jump List for the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
+Tab	Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D.
Ctrl++Tab	Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D.
Ctrl++B	Switch to the program that just displayed a message in the notification area.
+Spacebar	Preview the desktop.
+Up Arrow	Maximize the current window.
+Left Arrow	Maximize the current window to the left side of the screen.
+Right Arrow	Maximize the current window to the right side of the screen.
+Down Arrow	Minimize the current window.
+Home	Minimize all but the current window.
+Shift+Up Arrow	Stretch the window to the top and bottom of the screen.
+Shift+Left Arrow or Right Arrow	Move a window from one monitor to another. (This assumes you’re using a second monitor.)
+P	Choose a presentation display mode if you’re using more than one monitor or a projection screen.
+G	Cycle through your Desktop gadgets.
+U	Open Ease of Access Center.
+X	Open Windows Mobility Center on laptops or netbooks.

Q: I keep my song files in a single folder, listed in alphabetical order. I play them with Media Player 11, which came with Windows 7.

Some music files have the same title, but performed by different artists. To avoid duplicate file names, I added the name of the artist or group in parentheses, like In the Mood (Glen Miller) and In the Mood (Andrews Sisters) so I can tell the songs apart.

But the next day, the file names reverted to their old names.

How can I stop this from happening?

A: Media Player is the culprit here, and here’s why: Whenever you run Media Player, it automatically lists all of your songs in its Library, which lists each song’s title and artist name. Then, Media Player begins fiddling with your files, grabbing information from the Internet to make sure the songs’ include the right artist names and titles.

In your case, however, Media Player’s housekeeping is actually destroying all the time you spent arranging and naming your songs: One of Media Player’s tasks can include renaming your songs’ file names.

To fix the problem, you need to dive into Media Player’s settings by following these steps:

1. Open Media Player, either by clicking its icon on your taskbar, or clicking Start, choosing All Programs, and double-clicking Windows Media Player.
2. Click the Organize button and choose Options from the drop-down menu.
3. Click the Options window’s Library tab.
4. Click to remove the checkmark by “Rename music files using rip music settings.”
5. Click the OK button.

The next time you play your songs in Media Player, the program won’t rename them.

Q: I want to mirror my hard drive on an external hard drive. On page 237 of Windows 7 For Dummies, your book says “the  [Backup and Restore] program also creates a system image – an exact copy of the drive Windows 7 lives on.” Is this

A: Windows 7’s Backup and Restore program offers several options, including one for creating a “System Image.” Meant for backups, a System Image creates an exact copy of your Windows 7 hard drive and packs it into one large file, which you can store on a second hard drive. (A portable hard drive works great for this and other tasks.)

System Image provides a perfect backup for most people, as it contains everything on their C drive: Windows 7, all your installed programs, and all the files created with those programs.

So, how does a System Image differ from the “Backup and Restore” program’s normal backup? A regular backup copies your files, mostly from Windows 7’s Libraries:  Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. If you accidentally erase a file or two, turn to your regular backup to cherry pick the lost files you want to restore.

A System Image, by contrast, copies the entire drive. Restoring it is an all-or-nothing affair: You can return to the exact setup you had when you made the system image — but you can’t grab that file you accidentally deleted from your Documents library.

That’s why System Image provides a near perfect backup. When your hard drive eventually dies, you can restore your data from your System Image file: You boot from your Win 7 installation DVD (or a System Repair disc, which you can create when making the System Image), and choose a menu option to restore your hard drive from a System Image file.

Your computer grabs the System Image, places it onto your replacement hard drive, and you can begin working again from the time and date that you made that System Image backup.

When you have a System Image, you won’t need to reinstall Windows 7, your programs, nor your data files: It’s all there. You won’t even need to reactivate Windows, or mess with those annoying product keys.

It’s worth creating a System Image at least once a week, as every hard drive will eventually die. Creating a System Image ensures your work won’t die along with it. And, if your computer came with Windows 7 pre-installed, create a System Repair Disc along with it — you rarely, if ever, receive a Windows 7 installation DVD when Windows 7 comes pre-installed.

Technical note: If you have more than one version of Windows installed on your computer, say, Windows 7 on one partition, and Windows Vista on a second partition — the System Image will copy both versions of Windows, bringing them both back to life if you need them.

A: Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the letter “s” is one of many Windows shortcut keys. Shortcut keys are time savers, letting you keep your fingers on the keyboard while working, rather than knocking over the coffee while reaching for the mouse.

Pressing Ctrl+S means to “save your current document,” but Ctrl+S does slightly different things depending on what you’re currently doing:

• If you open an existing file, change a few things, and press Ctrl+S, your program saves the new information inside your opened file, keeping the file stored in its original location.
• If you create something new with a program and press Ctrl+S, the program creates a new file, asking you to choose a name and location to store your masterpiece. Most programs even simplify things by suggesting a file name and a location: They usually offer to place your new file inside one of your existing folders, depending on whether you’re working on a document, a music file, a video, or a picture. To retrieve that file later, return to that chosen folder.
• If you press Ctrl+S and you’re not working in a program, Windows does nothing. After all, you haven’t created any work to save.

But, you may ask, how do you find the file’s location if you don’t remember where you originally saved it?

You can find a file’s name and location in any of several ways:

• Click the Start menu and click Recent Items to see a list of the past 15 files you’ve created. Right-click a file’s name and choose “Open File Location” from the pop-up menu; Windows immediately opens the folder containing your long-sought file. (Windows even highlights the errant file’s name for easy clicking retrieval.)
• On the taskbar, right-click the icon of the program that created the file; hover your mouse pointer over the file’s name, and Windows lists the file’s location in a pop-up menu.
• Can’t even remember the file’s name? Click the Start menu and type a few words you remember from inside the document. Windows begins listing files containing those words. When you spot the right file, right-click its name and choose Open File Location.

The “Open File Location” command comes in handy whenever you can spot a file’s name, but want to see the folder where it’s currently living.

Q: Every time my children download and install a program, that program’s icon appears on

A: Your kids are probably installing programs that automatically install themselves for all account holders of the PC to use.

Many programs do this for a natural reason: The programmers want every account holder to be able to use their programs. Otherwise, every account holder would have to install their own copy of the program.

However, the more polite programs offer an installation option that asks, “Install a copy for every user of this computer?” Tell your children they should choose No when they see that option. That keeps the icons on their own desktops and Start menus, and leaves them off of yours. But if a program doesn’t offer that option, you’re stuck with seeing all those unwanted program icons proliferating on your desktop.

That said, seeing those icons provides you with a handy way to keep track of the programs your children are installing onto the family computer. The downside is you’ll have to keep deleting their icon clutter manually.

Q:

A: It sounds like you may have used one of Windows 7’s many performance-enhancing tweaks. In this case, Windows 7 sped things up by neglecting to resize any of your photos as thumbnails. Instead, Windows 7 simply slips in the generic ocean scene (shown above) as a substitute.

Luckily, you can keep the other performance tweaks Windows 7 has made, but bring back your photo thumbnails by following these steps:

1. Click the Start button and choose Control Panel.
2. Choose the “System and Security” category.
3. Click on the System icon.
4. From the System window’s left pane, click on the Advanced System Settings link. (The Systems Properties window opens to the Advanced tab.)
5. On the Advanced Tab’s “Performance” section, click on the Settings button. (It’s the top-most Settings button.)
6. In the Visual Effects tab, click to put a checkmark in the box called, “Show thumbnails instead of icons.”
7. Click the OK button.

Your thumbnails should return to normal.

Update: Jason Cole points out that you can also toggle between displaying icons and thumbnails by following these steps:

1. Open your Photos folder (or any other folder, for that matter).
2. Click the Organize button, and choose Folder and Search Options from the drop-down menu.
3. Click the View tab, and click “Always show icons, never thumbnails.”
4. Click the OK button to save your changes.

This post explains how to fix the same photo thumbnails problem in Windows Vista.

Q:

On Internet Explorer 8’s Page menu, the “Send Page by E-mail” and “Send Link by E-mail” options are both “grayed out,” and I can’t choose them. Help!

A: Windows 7 lacks an e-mail program, an inconvenience Microsoft tries to remedy by supplying the free “Windows Live Mail” e-mail program.

But once installed, Windows Live Mail doesn’t always tell Internet Explorer that it’s now in charge of your e-mail, leading to the “grayed out” options shown in the image above.

The fix? You must whisper in Internet Explorer’s ear about your new e-mail program by following these steps:

1. Click the Start button and choose Default Programs.
2. Choose the bottom option, “Set Program Access and Computer Defaults.”
3. Click the word Custom.
4. In the section called “Choose a default web browser,” choose Internet Explorer.
5. In the section called “Choose a default e-mail program,” choose Windows Live Mail.
6. Click OK to save your changes.

Windows 7 tells Internet Explorer to start using Windows Live Mail, and the options on Internet Explorer’s Page menu begin working again.

Not using Windows Live Mail or any other e-mail program? If you log onto a Web site to read your e-mail, Internet Explorer’s disabled links have a different problem.

When you’ve worked with a program for awhile, you might prefer learning a few keyboard shortcuts: quick key combinations that perform tasks faster than you can click a menu. Windows 7 offers zillions of keyboard shortcuts; some are new, some have been around since the first version of Windows.

These keyboard shortcuts all work in Windows 7’s WordPad program:

Microsoft’s Web site lists hundreds of more Windows 7 shortcut keys.

Q:

Also, in Windows XP, when my pictures are cycled by as my screen saver, the file name of the picture is shown across the top.  Is this feature lost in Windows 7, or can I click something to have it back?

A: Today’s computer monitors come in many sizes, from the tiny screens of cell phones to wall-hugging wide-screen TVs. To accommodate them all, Windows 7 offers more desktop background options than ever. To choose the right background, spend some time on the Picture Position drop-down menu, shown along the top of this page. A click on that menu offers these options:

Center: This centers your image on the screen. If the image is small, you’ll see a solid-colored border around the edges. On large images, you’ll see the very center of the image, with the rest outside of view. Choose this for small logos, close-ups of spider webs, and similar things where the focus belongs on the center.

Fill: This shrinks or enlarges your photo to fit your monitor’s width. That keeps everything in perspective, but chops off the top and bottom of large images and often stretches tiny images beyond recognition.  Choose this for horizon shots, where a photo’s top and bottom often aren’t missed.

Fit: This shrinks or enlarges your photo to fit your monitor’s height. Everything stays in perspective, but it lops off the sides of large images, and puts borders along the left and right sides of small images. I rarely use this one.

Stretch: Choose this when you must fit all of the photo on the screen, perspective be damned. This might work for some abstract or outdoors shots, but any easily recognizable objects like people or animals may look distorted as Windows stretches or shrinks them to meet your monitor’s confines.

Tile: Meant for small images or textures, this repeats the same image across the background like tile along a bathroom wall. You’ll find zillions of downloadable textures for tiling across your desktop.

As for your screensaver woes, Windows 7’s screensaver features are a step down from Windows XP, and there’s no built-in way to display a photo’s file name atop the photo.

Update (Thanks, Sharon!): Several models of Hewlett Packard computers running Windows 7 aren’t able to save their changes. Hewlett Packard fixed the problem by releasing a patch, which you can download by following these instructions:

1. Go to the Support area of Hewlett Packard’s Web site.
2. In Step 1 of HP’s Web site, choose the “Download drivers and software (and firmware)”
3. In Step 2 of HP’s Web site, enter your product name (e.g. pavilion 2022.)
4. Click on the link matching your PC model.
5. Choose Windows 7 operating system (either 32-bit or 64-bit) .
6. Scroll down the list to “Select software and drivers” and choose “Wallpaper picture position enabler.”

If you can’t find your product name in Step 3, try downloading running HP’s patch directly:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp45501-46000/sp45575.exe

Q:

How do I do this? Do I need a professional?

A: Today’s huge hard disks can be sliced up in a zillion different ways by dividing them into partitions. In plain language, a partition is simply a portion of the drive’s space.

Some people divide their computer’s hard drive into a single huge partition — the C: partition — and work from there. Others like to divide their hard drive into two or more partitions, keeping Windows on the C: partition, and saving the D: partition for bulky files like digital photos, movies or music.

In your case, you want to delete your D partition, and expand the C partition to fit the entire drive. Windows XP can’t handle this task by itself, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 can both handle the job fairly easily when you follow these steps:

1. Copy everything you want to save from your D: drive to your C: drive. (Or back it up to CDs or DVDs, because deleting the a partition erases its files.)
2. Click the Start button, right-click Computer, and choose Manage.
3. When the Computer Management window appears, choose Disk Management from the Storage area.
4. Right-click your D: partition and choose Delete Volume from the pop-up menu as shown below. (Click Yes at the confirmation prompt.)



5. Right-click your C: partition and choose Extend Volume from the pop-up menu.
6. When the Extend Volume Wizard appears, click Next at the opening screen, then click Next again to expand the C: drive to fill the room left by the now-deleted D: drive.
7. Click Finish to tell the Extend Volume Wizard to finish the job of extending the C: drive to fill the available space.

When you’re through, your C: partition will consume your entire drive.